My Creative Space - Party Favours

Once again I find my creative space cluttered with creations for a birthday party rather than creations for my stores.  I think it is safe to say that I am insane and foolishly don't learn from my mistakes!  It is cheeky monkey #1's birthday in a month's time and we are planning to host a birthday party for her with her little school friends.  I have, as usual, suggested that she have a handmade element to the party and she decided, after looking through several blogs with me, that handmade party favour bags would be a great idea.  And an even better idea would be for her to rummage through my fabric scraps and have me sew the party favour bags.  And me, being the crazy woman that I am, said, "Okay, sure, that's a GREAT idea."

Six little bags, multiple stabbed fingers and about 4.5 hours later, I am thinking that this was a really stupid idea.  Not only do I still have another four bags to sew, but most of my fabric scraps are not of lovely, quilting quality cotton, but are of slippery polyesters and cotton sheers.  Plus I'm working to a "simple" pattern I devised in my head which includes shaped bases for the bags as well as lining for the bags made from equally slippery and unmanageable fabrics.  And to make matters worse, the bags aren't perfect due to my inexperience with these kinds of fabrics.  Hope nobody notices!  What's filling up your creative space this week?

Excitement Plus - a "Pride and Prejudice" Giveaway!

 
So I've been thinking about hosting a blog giveaway for some time and realised that with all my thinking and not much doing, it's been a long time between giveaways.  But that situation is easily rectified with a Pride and Prejudice giveaway!  What could you win?  I was a little undecided about what the prize should be, so I thought I would let the winner decide.  Up for grabs is your choice of a Darcy or an Elizabeth P&P text brooch.  That's right, the winner will get to choose one of these beautiful brooches!

What do you have to do to win one of these brooches?  As is usual for me, there are a number of ways to enter this giveaway:

Mandatory Entry:

Look through either my Etsy or Madeit stores and tell me which is your current favourite Pride and Prejudice creation (feel free to look through the "sold" section too).

Optional Entries:

1. Let me know your favourite Pride and Prejudice character or quote and which brooch you would choose if you are the winner.

2. Become a follower of my blog.

3. Become a liker of my Facebook page and let me know.

4. Blog, Tweet or mention on Facebook about this giveaway. Don't forget to leave me a link to your mention!  If you do all three social media mentions, please leave a separate comment for each.

Please leave a SEPARATE COMMENT for each entry as well as a way for me to contact you should you be the winner.

This giveaway will run until midnight, 31 August 2011 (Australian Eastern Standard Time) and is open to entrants WORLDWIDE.  The winner will be chosen via Random.org.

Two Cheeky Monkeys Clearance Sale and Store News

Today's post is a mixed bag of news relating to various goings on in my crafting life.  Firstly, I want to announce a very special clearance sale currently running in my Etsy store.  I know I'm a little slow on the uptake, but I have been constantly reminded that, as a mother with young children and many crafty interests, I need to focus my creative energy to more optimally use my time.

In the interests of better running my business, it is also better if I focus on a few popular design styles rather than creating everything which catches my fancy.  Therefore, I am selling off all of my old stock at a 40% discount, that's right 40% OFF.  For those of you who prefer to shop in AUD, I will slowly be discounting the old stock in my Madeit store too, just keep an eye out for the "SALE" tagged items.

Red Berries Earrings

Secondly, those of you who regularly visit my Facebook fan pages will notice a slight change to the options on the left sidebar.  Yes, as I mentioned, I am a little slow, so I have only finally added a "contact" tab to both my Two Cheeky Monkeys and Domum Vindemia pages.  So from now on, you can easily contact me via my Facebook pages without having to worry about looking up my email address to send me an email.  This new way of contacting me should come in very handy for events such as my upcoming Domum Vindemia market night this THURSDAY, 18th August, where I will be selling a mix of old and new designs via my Facebook page.

Gwendolyn Cake Stand

And finally, while I am excited about the recent decisions I have made to try and manage my unruly craft life, this post is written with much sadness as I remember the tragedy which struck a fellow jeweller and online friend on Sunday night.  Those of you who are regular readers of my Feature Friday posts may remember Julie-Ann, one of the lovely DUST team leaders on Etsy and a wonderful woman who committed a lot of her time and energy to both the online crafting and her local communities as well as taking care of her children, some of whom have special needs.

I was shocked to discover yesterday afternoon that Julie-Ann and her teenaged daughter were among the victims of the light plane crash I had been hearing about on the news all day.  Julie-Ann was critically injured in the accident and is being treated in hospital in the ICU, but sadly her daughter and the plane's pilot were both killed.

I would like to ask you to pray for my lovely friend and her family, as well as for the family of the pilot, as they all come to terms with their sudden loss.  As someone who has recently experienced a very personal loss, I can only begin to imagine just how painful the days, weeks and months ahead are going to be for Julie-Ann and her family.

One For the Star Wars Geeks...Uh, Fans

You probably all know by now that my beloved husband is a big time geek, he he he.  And being the good geek that he is, LOL, he is a big fan of the Star Wars movies and liked to pretend to be Luke Skywalker when he was a boy.  (I hope he doesn't mind me telling you that!)  So, when I discovered the amazing My Sushi World blog and all the mind boggling Star Wars-inspired vegetable carvings pictured in it, I just had to go on the search for more Star Wars-themed food creations.  Enjoy!

Carrot Darth Vader at My Sushi World

R2-D2 cake at Birthday Cake Pictures

Yoda cookie/biscuit by East Coast Cookies

Millenium Falcon cake at Cakes! Cakes! Cakes!

Friday Fun - Skirt Tutorials

Hello to all of my faithful readers!  I find myself, yet again, wondering how I'm going to get back into some regular blogging.  I am afraid that the various goings on in my life, some of which are self-inflicted (such as a last minute decision to host a sale on my Two Cheeky Monkeys Facebook page), have left me with little time to come up with witty, educational and all round rivetting posts for you to read.

Anyway, on to the point of today's post, which is to share with you some cute skirt tutorials I recently found.  My two cheeky monkeys are absolutely enamoured with skirt wearing, which is kind of irritating since they own quite a few pairs of pretty shorts and they also steadfastly refuse to sit (or act) in a ladylike fashion.  But I digress...  Having decided that I am fighting a losing battle over the whole skirt wearing issue, I have decided that I would like to try out one (or more) of the following skirt tutorials.  If you have any other links to simple skirt tutorials, please feel free to share them with me!

Heirloom skirt tutorial at dana made it

Super speedy skirt tutorial at luv in the mommy hood

Breezy skirt tutorial at make it and love it

Reversible skirt tutorial at Bored & Crafty

Shoe Re-Fashion - My Holiday Project

Something that you might not know about me is that I loooooove shoes!  And I love all types of shoes, be they flats, heels, boots or sandals.  Considering that I spend most of my time barefoot and often prefer not to wear shoes or socks, you might say that this love of mine is a little strange.  Be that as it may, I love shoes so much that when I was a teenager, my dad used to refer to me as "Imelda Marcos", although I didn't (and still don't) have a wardrobe full of shoes.

Anyway, because of my rather small and wide feet, I find it quite hard to find shoes which fit me in Australia (unless I am willing to pay a tonne as well as searching high and low).  So, as you can imagine, I spent a lot of our recent holiday in Singapore trawling the many shoe stores we passed (and there were a lot of shoe stores situated right next to our serviced apartments!) for three particular styles of shoes which I "needed".  The first style of shoes (sexy peep toe stilettoes) was found relatively easily and I very quickly gave up on finding a pair of sandals which met my rather rigorous criteria.  The third pair I wanted, *cough*, needed, was a pair of embellished ballet-style flats in a light or "nude" colour.

 

As I mentioned, I have a lot of requirements when I buy shoes, so I really struggled to find a pair which was just right.  After a while I realised that I wasn't going to find exactly what I wanted, so why not have a go at re-fashioning a plain pair of flats into an embellished pair?  The first picture above is the actual pair of flats which I purchased.  Aside from the fact that they are completely unadorned and rather plain, they are pretty close to what I wanted.  The rest of the photos in this post are from my inspiration board, I just have to decide which elements to incorporate into my project!